A thriving, planet-compatible food system requires specialized proteins produced in abundance, beyond generic isolates of whey and soy. Asterix grows plant cells in modular bioreactors in order to manufacture complex proteins and upend the economics of production by creating new food sources from scratch. Each new ingredient is a recipe holding the promise of new capabilities.

Competing alternative protein producers grow microbes in high-spec reactors driving costs up to $500M per facility. Asterix is built on a different organising principle. The team has delivered commercially viable economics growing plant cells in reusable reactors, at room temperature, in a Tel Aviv office building. Price points are favourable even at small unit volumes, meaning bioproduction can be funded incrementally and aimed at a broad range of specialty proteins, not only bulk commodities.

Dan Even has been vegetarian since childhood. He trained in plant molecular biology and genetic engineering at the Weizmann Institute, studied plant root-microbiome systems at the John Innes Centre, and taught immunology and antibody engineering at Tel Aviv University. Prior to Asterix, he worked on molecular farming for dairy proteins: engineering whole plants in the field and extracting proteins from them. This experience provided a unique insight: the organism is the factory!

As Asterix scales, dairy products become decoupled from dairy herds; infant formula becomes affordable and matches the performance of human milk. Complex foods become something we can make wherever there is space, feedstock, and demand. The universe of proteins humanity can choose to produce becomes unbounded, and our food system gets designed from the atom up.